Haven't read the whole thread yet, but I expect maximum whining from the most entitled, spoiled generation in the history of civilization.
For anyone who gets out of the house and operates in the real world, including doing the ancient practice of driving a car, Siri works great and is indesensible for making calls, getting directions, that kind of thing. All else that people expect a voice assistant to do is gravy, and a work in progress.
The spoiled narcissists in our midst are going to destroy the best things America has produced, including this experiment in Democracy and Apple's experiment in conscientious manufacturing.
Amazon echo is over rated. I think it will fade in time. Amazon people who have never used voice assistance will be impressed for a while with Alexa. Time will tell.
You've obviously not used the Echo. I don't own one but a friend does, and it's pretty amazing. It can parse a sentence much better than Siri, has a wider range of utility, and you don't have to say 'Hey'.
I try to use Siri with my Hue lights and there's a 50% chance that Siri will tell me it can't be done, for some reason or other. Now it may well be Philip's integration that's the problem. But Siri will often misinterpret a phrase or respond with 'I don't understand'. Hard to blame Philips for that bit.
So I hope Apple gets Siri-ous with voice control. They had arguably a better start with Voice Command. There is great competition with Echo and Google Home, and they've made some advances put Siri in third place. In the meantime, I'll get a Dot to play around with, and maybe bridge some gaps.
Haven't read the whole thread yet, but I expect maximum whining from the most entitled, spoiled generation in the history of civilization.
For anyone who gets out of the house and operates in the real world, including doing the ancient practice of driving a car, Siri works great and is indesensible for making calls, getting directions, that kind of thing. All else that people expect a voice assistant to do is gravy, and a work in progress.
The spoiled narcissists in our midst are going to destroy the best things America has produced, including this experiment in Democracy and Apple's experiment in conscientious manufacturing.
Wow the Apple apologizing is getting to a level that equals Trump sycophants defending everything he says and does. It would be nice if the apologists could simply say 'that's not my experience' rather than name calling and snark. And it's sad that to see some people keep lowering the bar for Apple. Pretty much everything you mentioned are things Siri could do 5 years ago. We should give Apple a prize because Siri can still do that 5 years later? We shouldn't expect more? I don't want Siri to be good enough. I don't pay a premium for Apple hardware for 'good enough' software and services. I want Apple kicking everyone's ass. That's what I pay for.
Haven't read the whole thread yet, but I expect maximum whining from the most entitled, spoiled generation in the history of civilization.
For anyone who gets out of the house and operates in the real world, including doing the ancient practice of driving a car, Siri works great and is indesensible for making calls, getting directions, that kind of thing. All else that people expect a voice assistant to do is gravy, and a work in progress.
The spoiled narcissists in our midst are going to destroy the best things America has produced, including this experiment in Democracy and Apple's experiment in conscientious manufacturing.
Wow the Apple apologizing is getting to a level that equals Trump sycophants defending everything he says and does. It would be nice if the apologists could simply say 'that's not my experience' rather than name calling and snark. And it's sad that to see some people keep lowering the bar for Apple. Pretty much everything you mentioned are things Siri could do 5 years ago. We should give Apple a prize because Siri can still do that 5 years later? We shouldn't expect more? I don't want Siri to be good enough. I don't pay a premium for Apple hardware for 'good enough' software and services. I want Apple kicking everyone's ass. That's what I pay for.
You do know that Siri has improved in the last 5 years, right? I would assume you'd know that but your comments sound as if you're saying nothing has improved. The issue is whether it's improved as much as other services, especially when compared to the likes of the Echo which Amazon seemingly had no previous experience in this game. At least with Google they had tested and shelved all the parts that would make Google Now which allowed them to come out with a Siri competitor not long after Siri was introduced in the iPhone 4S in 2011.
PS: Personally, I've had so much trouble with Siri lately that I'm going to wipe my phone. Maybe it's the microphone in my iPhone not working as well as it used to (I did check for lint covering the mics), or maybe it's the new on-board AI for Siri in iOS 10 (which seems odd since it still can't do something as simple as setting a timer or changing a song without an internet connection back to the Siri servers), but something is really wrong. Parsing has about a 2 chance of working, and when it does it probably won't be able to complete the request—like when I ask it to play an artist, song or album which I have in my Music app, which was bought from the iTunes Store, and which was parsed correctly in the displayed text, it says it doesn't exist. This doesn't mean that Siri is off, but it does mean something is, hence the need for a restore to help locate or resolve the fault.
While I use Apple Music, I use a Sonos system to play the music, I use Fire TV instead of Apple TV for media and I use Waze rather than Apple Maps for navigation. As I have a car that has Android Auto as well as CarPlay I have started moving my SIM card over to a Galaxy S7 Edge for longer car trips to use Android Auto as I find, other than messaging, which is something I kind of avoid while driving anyway, CarPlay is useless and more often than not responds with 'I am sorry, I can't search the internet while you are driving' which makes the CarPlay experience useless and frustrating. I kind of thought that being able to use voice to do things like find a gas station or see if a store is open was kind of the idea.
Because of the sorry state of SIRI and APPLE MAPS I've stayed a way from CarPlay. Thanks for letting me know its not worth it.
And because of SIR and MAPS there is no way in hell that I would be interested in an Apple car. Maybe Car Play (or an Apple enhanced User Experience) might be good if Apple started providing "A" series chip call it the "C" series for traditional Auto makers. Apple has proven that they can design small powerful specialized chips.
Years after the Scott Forstall was pushed out for problems in iMaps I can't believe that Cue hasn't been either fired, Reassigned, or had these Responsibilities moved to a new executive. The executive level at Apple seems more like a "boys tree house club" - its just the friends who get along with Cook and Ive. They have only added one product (the watch) since Jobs died. and yet it seems like product development has slowed down all the last few years with updates taking years to iPads and computers. Because of this Cook should be replaced.
Blah blah blah rant. I remember when Jobs added products every day of the year.
Shit, he didn't. I guess you don't consider the AirPods a product. If development was so easy, everyone would be releasing new products daily.
Maps works for me.
I consider AirPods an accessory item. Sounds like a good one though. I don't have a watch but I'll give credit to Apple for getting the watch right with the second generation and watchOS 3.0. Some products like the iPhone need to be updated every year. Others can probably go 1.5 (watch, iPads) to 2 years (Computers) between updates. Accessories like the AirPods, AirPort extreme, etc can probably go 3 to 4 years between upgrades.
Siri just needs serious work to catch up. It seems like DED does one of these pro-Siri anti Echo/Google Home articles every 6 months or so to keep people from abandoning the one true Apple religion for a product from another company. With Siri in its current state. It would be an embarrassment to release a home Hub anytime soon.
I would have preferred buying a great Apple product to do the same but I'm not holding my breath waiting for it to show up.
Blah blah blah rant. I remember when Jobs added products every day of the year.
Shit, he didn't. I guess you don't consider the AirPods a product.
I consider AirPods an accessory item.
1) They are an accessory and they are a product. These aren't mutually exclusive.
2) While Watch can be used most of the time in an independent fashion, it's also an accessory product. Why is Watch a failure because it's an accessory and AirPods aren't for being in the same category?
I'm curious what people actually ask Alexa to do. I just don't see the benefit or why I'd want one (or a bunch, actually) in my home.
What would be the Top 10 questions/commands you give Alexa that makes it worthwhile?
Top 10? I'm not sure I could tell you an accurate list.. Same for Siri, although my most common non-query to Siri is probably telling it to fuck off after it repeatedly fails on simple commands.
Some of the things I do is create multiple timers for cooking. I also ask it to music or news from any variety of sources, including my personal library. The weather forecast is another one. A nice feature with having an Echo is that you can practically mumble this from across the room while passing through the room right after waking up and it'll be spot on. Another nice feature of the Echo is being able to say "Alexa…" while music is playing fairly loudly and it'll be able to pause the music to listen to the rest of your command. If it's up too loud you may have to yell "Alexa." Speaking of volume, I like the 1 through 10 volume setting over Siri's percentage option, which I only learned about in the last week. The aforementioned alarms and asking for the time with remarkable ease is one. I can't come close to that with "Hey, Siri…" even though on paper it might look like the same thing. Flash briefings of news are nice while you're in the kitchen cooking, which you can personalize. Having stuff added to a to-do list, shopping list, and to your Amazon cart is convenient. I only use the latter for Echo as I still use Notes in my iPhone and Mac with manual entries. Trivia is great with Echo during a dinner conversation. And if you don't have a song in your library, it will look to play it for you from its collection, and if not it will at least play a sample from its Amazon page. Kind of fun to be talking about a movie and then play clips from the soundtrack from the Amazon website. If you want to play full songs you can just ask it to play a genre. If you have some other service added it will try that, otherwise it will try other options. Unlike with the Apple TV's TV app and with Amazon's Prime Video which lumps paid and free content together without a hierarchy, Alexa's algorithm looks to satisfy your requests with your personalized settings and services, and then works to other options if those don't pan out.
It's also now great for smart home integration, checking the status of a flight before you leave, ordering an Uber/Lyft, and my roommate used it to find her keys and iPhone as she was prone to misplacing the moment she put them down. There are simply too many features to list and I'm forgetting a million things I use it for without thinking twice. Your request is like asking me the top 10 things I talk about with someone I've lived with for 2 years. I'm not saying your question is unreasonable since we're talking about technology, but from my end that's what the question feels like since it does so much.
Sorry, but not one thing you listed is anything I'd ever see myself using. There's technology that actually improves your life and technology that's "cool". To me this seems more like the latter.
1) That's perfectly fine if you have no use for a voice controlled system in your home, but I guess that means you don't cook at home so you have no need for timers, an eidetic memory so you have no need for converting measurements, and so great at math that you'd have no need to figure out portions that aren't part of a recipe all while your hands are too dirty to use your iPhone or another device.
2) I find it hard to believe that you looked through all 10,000 Skills and saw not a single thing that could be useful to you, but let's assume that you did look through every possible feature that the Alexa service offers and found none that suits your needs; what does that have to do with the technology improving the lives of others? Just because it's not for you doesn't mean you should write it off as being beneficial to others. The iPad is not the ideal computing device for my needs, but I'd never say that the iPad is a pointless gadget that can't possibly "improve your life."
"Eidetic memory"? Did you look in a thesaurus to find an obscure word instead of just saying "photographic memory" or "perfect memory"? You picked a bad example in cooking since I've been cooking since I was 10. And yes, I can convert anything related to cooking in my head. It's not that difficult nor does it require you to be great at math. My mother and grandmother could also do it. It's not rocket science.
My morning routine goes like this: My iPad is on the kitchen table while I make/eat breakfast. All my Safari tabs have loaded the sites I visit to check news or other things I'm interested in. My daily appointments and reminders are also on my iPad so I can check ahead to see what I'm doing for the day. I also check my email (home and work). I usually respond to some emails and/or text coworkers about anything important. By the time I've finished breakfast I have accomplished every single task I need to on my iPad regarding my day.
All without ever having to ask some voice-assistant several different questions and carefully listen to its responses (it's a known fact that retention of detailed information is better when you read something instead of hearing it, as opposed to stories where retention is similar for both). Or dictate back that text message I planned to send with, oh maybe, a copy/paste of some information in an email. How do you do that with Alexa?
I just don't see how a voice assistant (Alexa, Google or Siri) is going to improve my morning routine, save me any time, or provide me better information that what I'm already getting. Nor how it will improve my daily routine at work where I DON'T have something like Alexa on my desk or in the numerous locations I'm required to be. Or when I get home. And no, I didn't look through those 10,000 skills. Why, to find one or two things that might be slightly more useful than what I'm doing now? Do you think every Alexa owner has read that entire list as well?
Amazon echo is over rated. I think it will fade in time. Amazon people who have never used voice assistance will be impressed for a while with Alexa. Time will tell.
I've been using Siri from the start. I currently use Siri and voice dictation with my Mac, iPhone, Watch, and have used Siri in the past with an iPad.
I've also had an Amazon Echo since it first came out. I was quite lucky with their lottery and got the very first shipment of the Echo. I was impressed then and I still am today. As Ttollerton states, the HW is more extensive, which probably means the far-field microphones can do a better job, but its excellence as a product and service far exceeds that one aspect.
Alexa is amazingly fast. It feels like it's processing its answer before you even finish speaking so it can reply with a cadence that would impress a Gilmore Girl. It also never seems to misunderstand a single thing I say and never seems to have to "think about" what I asked, unlike Siri. With Siri it feels like it it's querying a server for a reply, but with Alexa it all feels localized even though it's not. Same WiFi network and same broadband connection.
All these services have pros and cons—most of which are the same—but Alexa has 3 great features I wish Apple had brought to Siri from the start:
I can look at any previous Alexa request in my history in the Alexa app on on Amazon.com. I can then let Amazon know how well the service did in understanding my voice (voice-to-text) and/or parsing my query. If Apple had this I believe they could've made Siri much better, much faster.
I can load Skills into Alexa. These are 3rd-party apps for Alexa. Whatever abilities the Alexa service comes with out of the box, telling Alexa to add a Skill shores up pretty much anything you can think of. I think Apple just opened up Siri to 3rd-party developers with APIs for iOS 10 but I honestly can't recall because of the way Apple seems to treat Siri like the M[achi]n[e] in the Iron Mask.
I get emails from Amazon letting me know what new features were added to the Alexa service. They list many example commands and major new Skills and I'm often willing to try them because they are usually pretty nifty. I know Apple has added new features to Siri—which oddly seem to come with iOS updates—but I couldn't tell you any of its newer features to enrich my life because of how they market the service.
I'm sure Siri is world's better than it was when it originally came out on the iPhone 4S in 2011, and I'm sure that many of the questions I've asked in the past and got poor to no answer probably work great now, but I don't go to the trouble of writing down all the failed queries, wait a year, and then try them again. This is not uncommon and Siri has spoiled for many Apple customers except for the most basic requests. Apple needs to find a way to reinvigorate Siri.
PS: I'm remodeling my home and when my bedroom is finished I'll be going "electronics free" in the bedroom (mostly) with the intention of it leading to better sleep habits which will hopefully result in more productive waking hours. That means no iPhone or Watch will charge in the room on the nightstand. No entertainment in the bedroom (meaning no Mac, no TV, and no book reading). Not even a traditional alarm clock will be used because of the light from the clock can have a negative effect, according to some studies. Instead I'll have an Amazon Dot ($49) which will allow me to voice activate setting an alarm and asking what time it is as its primary use. I tested this with my Echo, but I'd rather keep that in the kitchen/dining area because of its great speaker and its benefits when cooking.
I'm curious what people actually ask Alexa to do. I just don't see the benefit or why I'd want one (or a bunch, actually) in my home.
What would be the Top 10 questions/commands you give Alexa that makes it worthwhile?
We've had one for a month now. We tell it three things.
1) Alexa play _______ music 2) Alexa add _________ to the shopping list 3) Alexa set a timer for _____
I use Siri much more than Alexa, but I'm out and about, so Alexa is mostly useless to me.
Apple is going to have to rebrand Siri to even get me to think about using it again. It's a POS. And Maps. There seems to be a construction zone down the street from me that's never there.
Yeah, the new version of Maps has become a bit of a visual mess, hasn't it. Can't even see the Interstate icons any more, for instance! And too many pop-up boxes all over the place that hide actual map info.
Is Maps also under Cue? (What about Siri?).
Maps and Siri are under Cue. Everyone knows I'm not a big fan of Eddy Cue. I think Cook should hire a new SVP to take over iCloud, Siri and Maps. Give Jennifer Bailey complete control of Apple Pay (and maybe have her report directly to Cook) and move Eddy Cue to LA to focus 100% Apple Music and Apple TV. Oh and task him with busing up the disaster that iTunes has become. It's pretty bad when an AppleCare phone rep admits to me that iTunes is too complicated and does too much.
Cue is so way past his sell-by date. I truly wish, for Apple's sake, that he will just cash in and leave. Apple desperately needs some new blood in its senior decision-making ranks, especially on the software side.
Don't get me started on the pos that is iTunes. It's starting to make Windows look good...
Some folks have absolutely no idea what these people do at Apple and what they know. People like Eddy Cue, Phil Shiller, Dan Riccio , Craig Federighi amongst others are extremely important to Apple's success and losing them to a competitor must never happen. They magically make good things happen at Apple. Many people shooting their mouths here have no idea what it takes to manage even a small team and deliver commercial grade products internationally consistently. It's no joke folks, have some respect for these people.
I have heard some blogger say this every year since 2012 Maybe Siri works in the US. In Europe it is worse than an abomination. Like Apple it is monolingual. This is great if you only read English watch English live in an English country and listen or speak english. The minute that any of these change, Siri becomes pointless. It cannot handle my non English names and addresses. I can't even train it to say Uli in English. I cannot use it in CarPlay because it cannot read German, understand German streets Blablabla. So I stopped using CarPlay altogether and went back to navigon. I cannot use it in AppleTV as it cannot understand any movies other than English and then only some, I can use only one function on my watch... set timer. Anything else is a joke. Using it on Music is diabolical. It understands madonna but not architecture and waves. Let alone any music that isn't in English. I cannot even contemplate using EarPods. Oh by the way, on my iMac it is useless. English only.
of course I could switch the language to German, which means switching all my device languages too. And then I would have the reverse issue. It doesn't understand English. And this is the thing in Europe, every country is multilingual! I know that is difficult to understand in the US, but that is the reality.
Everytime Tim Cook stands in front of an audience and brags about Siri being correct 94% of the time I want to scream for proof! It doesn't even work for 6% of the time for me.
So please spare me the 2017 is the year for Siri bullshit. It's a dog waiting to be put out of its misery. The really interesting thing is that since 2011 apple hasn't been able to make siri work, and they want to crack autonomous driving by 2019???? That is hilarious!
I used to use Apple products for everything, I have been an Apple user almost exclusively since 1987.
As time goes by I am using less and less as there are better solutions, at least for me.
While I use Apple Music, I use a Sonos system to play the music, I use Fire TV instead of Apple TV for media and I use Waze rather than Apple Maps for navigation. As I have a car that has Android Auto as well as CarPlay I have started moving my SIM card over to a Galaxy S7 Edge for longer car trips to use Android Auto as I find, other than messaging, which is something I kind of avoid while driving anyway, CarPlay is useless and more often than not responds with 'I am sorry, I can't search the internet while you are driving' which makes the CarPlay experience useless and frustrating. I kind of thought that being able to use voice to do things like find a gas station or see if a store is open was kind of the idea.
I applaud Apple's commitment to security and privacy, I don't know how important that is to the average user, how many people read EULAs? My point is that until that becomes important to people, and that would require a certain amount of analytical thinking, I don't think that is something that will be fully appreciated.
The truth is that Apple services and hardware, when you take the entire experience into consideration is still a compelling ecosystem. The problem is that few of the parts are class leading, I mean, really, what person having used both products is going to use Apple Maps over Waze, or iCloud over Google Apps for Business, even Microsoft with Office 365 has a more compelling offering than Apple, why is this?
All companies go through cycles, ups and downs, and Apple has become a huge behemoth of a company doing far more than it used to. With scale, the ability to be nimble and respond to a market becomes more and more difficult. Looking at when they announced HomeKit and it's current state is really disappointing. The integration of HomeKit and Siri is also a big disappointment. I have a bunch of HomeKit stuff and have more or less given up on using it as it works 75% of the time.
Siri does some things really well, interacting with a calendar, replying to text messages, setting a timer, things like that work really well. The problem comes in when you want to use it to do more than that, Google Assistant is a far superior product for things like inquiries about businesses, getting directions, looking up random information. This is because Google is a successful search company and Apple is relying on Yelp and Wolfram Alpha.
I am involved in tech and of my friends 60% probably use iPhones, I don't think any of them uses Siri on a regular basis, as it just does not work well enough. To add on to that, there is little documentation. I have just ordered an Amazon Echo on the recommendation of a friend who has been using it to control all his HomeKit devices. Maybe my Home automation devices will get some use again, and it is another thing I will stop using an Apple solution for.
Just as Google acquired Waze, and I know that Apple does quite a number of acquisitions, they could stand to do more.
I don't think Apple has to be the best at everything, that is an impossible expectation. The do however have to be good at enough stuff that as a whole they compelling for users to commit to their products and services. Time will tell if they are able to pull that off now that competition is heating up.
"I don't think Apple has to be the best at everything, that is an impossible expectation."
No one is saying that Apple should be the best at everything but they should aim for being the best in the arenas they choose to compete in. Apple's philosophy has always been about "Making the best products". The best products today = best hardware + best OS + best services + best developer ecosystem
Apple is going to have to rebrand Siri to even get me to think about using it again. It's a POS. And Maps. There seems to be a construction zone down the street from me that's never there.
Yeah, the new version of Maps has become a bit of a visual mess, hasn't it. Can't even see the Interstate icons any more, for instance! And too many pop-up boxes all over the place that hide actual map info.
Is Maps also under Cue? (What about Siri?).
Maps and Siri are under Cue. Everyone knows I'm not a big fan of Eddy Cue. I think Cook should hire a new SVP to take over iCloud, Siri and Maps. Give Jennifer Bailey complete control of Apple Pay (and maybe have her report directly to Cook) and move Eddy Cue to LA to focus 100% Apple Music and Apple TV. Oh and task him with busing up the disaster that iTunes has become. It's pretty bad when an AppleCare phone rep admits to me that iTunes is too complicated and does too much.
Cue is so way past his sell-by date. I truly wish, for Apple's sake, that he will just cash in and leave. Apple desperately needs some new blood in its senior decision-making ranks, especially on the software side.
Don't get me started on the pos that is iTunes. It's starting to make Windows look good...
Yes I'd like to see him gone too but for whatever reason he seems to be well liked inside the company so I don't see him going anywhere. My suggesting is just giving him the stuff he's most comfortable with. I trust Craig more on the software side but there's no way he can own all of Apple's operating systems plus all of their cloud services. And we haven't even talked about other software like iWork, Logic, Final Cut etc. Poach someone really good from Amazon, Google or Microsoft to run Apple's cloud/AI/ML efforts. It's not going to get where it needs to be under Eddy Cue that's for sure.
It could be a case of Cue having too much on his plate. Split his organization into twoI say give him control of iTunes, ATV, Apple Music, iWork, LPX, FCPX, Photos, Garbageband, iMovie and give another SVP control of iCloud, Siri, Maps, Apple Pay
Amazon echo is over rated. I think it will fade in time. Amazon people who have never used voice assistance will be impressed for a while with Alexa. Time will tell.
I've also had an Amazon Echo since it first came out. I was quite lucky with their lottery and got the very first shipment of the Echo. I was impressed then and I still am today.
I, too, was lucky in their lottery... but while waiting for shipping to begin, it occurred to me that I really had no use for it. (That's just me, I know.) I immediately gave it away as a wedding present to a niece, and I've never regretted it. She & spouse seem to mostly use it to astound and confound the older generation in the family, by "mysteriously" playing music and "magically" adjusting the volume...(ooo-OOO-ooooo..) so I guess it's a good thing the prices have dropped precipitously
Haven't read the whole thread yet, but I expect maximum whining from the most entitled, spoiled generation in the history of civilization.
For anyone who gets out of the house and operates in the real world, including doing the ancient practice of driving a car, Siri works great and is indesensible for making calls, getting directions, that kind of thing. All else that people expect a voice assistant to do is gravy, and a work in progress.
The spoiled narcissists in our midst are going to destroy the best things America has produced, including this experiment in Democracy and Apple's experiment in conscientious manufacturing.
Wow the Apple apologizing is getting to a level that equals Trump sycophants defending everything he says and does. It would be nice if the apologists could simply say 'that's not my experience' rather than name calling and snark. And it's sad that to see some people keep lowering the bar for Apple. Pretty much everything you mentioned are things Siri could do 5 years ago. We should give Apple a prize because Siri can still do that 5 years later? We shouldn't expect more? I don't want Siri to be good enough. I don't pay a premium for Apple hardware for 'good enough' software and services. I want Apple kicking everyone's ass. That's what I pay for.
Of course Siri needs work, and will always need work. Same with iOS and Mac OS.
I'm not apologizing for Apple here or elsewhere. I'm saying that you relentless complainers are joining and spreading an unjustified climate of hostility toward the company, just like the haters. You may be one of those, for all I know.
It's possible to kill the goose with this corrosive bilge. Jobs got rattled by it over the iPad hostility, and Schiller showed signs of it with his "my ass" comment. They know they have problems, and you know they're working on them. Why would you want to join this pack of miserable junkyard dogs like K2kw, insanely carping at them?
Amazon echo is over rated. I think it will fade in time. Amazon people who have never used voice assistance will be impressed for a while with Alexa. Time will tell.
I've also had an Amazon Echo since it first came out. I was quite lucky with their lottery and got the very first shipment of the Echo. I was impressed then and I still am today.
I, too, was lucky in their lottery... but while waiting for shipping to begin, it occurred to me that I really had no use for it. (That's just me, I know.) I immediately gave it away as a wedding present to a niece, and I've never regretted it. She & spouse seem to mostly use it to astound and confound the older generation in the family, by "mysteriously" playing music and "magically" adjusting the volume...(ooo-OOO-ooooo..) so I guess it's a good thing the prices have dropped precipitously
("Hey, Alexa - what's Apple's 'next big thing'?")
In my house the only one confounded is the cat when you use the "Meow" Skill to have Alexa speak back recordings of cats. My cat goes bonkers trying to find the source. I figure that might be stressful for her so I stopped doing it. Probably worse than the laser pointer which will never be able to catch.
Many of the Alexa Echo praisers here are jokes. Alexa Echo is a very expensive device at $179. They skipped this fact. Further, Siri can be used to control the iPhone like asking Siri to turn on and off the wifi which Alex Echo can not do. May be these jokers are just fandroids?
Holy shįî. I hope someone from the company is paying attention to this stunning conversation.
I think we may may be in the midst of a Trumpster-level mindshift in the Apple faithful. I am sensing a serious sentiment shift.
It'd be great if Apple actually DID pay attention, but I don't see evidence of them doing so in any meaningful way. Siri has been around for a rather long time, and yet many of us out here feel like Apple hasn't pushed forward and made it great. If they are working to improve it with their various acquisitions and hiring additional personnel, that work has yet to be realized. I'm underwhelmed by their performance, as are many on this forum. For once, it'd be great if Apple actually listened to their customers on an issue and actually did something to fix it. Siri has a long way to go to actually be a Digital Assistant.
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For anyone who gets out of the house and operates in the real world, including doing the ancient practice of driving a car, Siri works great and is indesensible for making calls, getting directions, that kind of thing. All else that people expect a voice assistant to do is gravy, and a work in progress.
The spoiled narcissists in our midst are going to destroy the best things America has produced, including this experiment in Democracy and Apple's experiment in conscientious manufacturing.
I try to use Siri with my Hue lights and there's a 50% chance that Siri will tell me it can't be done, for some reason or other. Now it may well be Philip's integration that's the problem. But Siri will often misinterpret a phrase or respond with 'I don't understand'. Hard to blame Philips for that bit.
So I hope Apple gets Siri-ous with voice control. They had arguably a better start with Voice Command. There is great competition with Echo and Google Home, and they've made some advances put Siri in third place. In the meantime, I'll get a Dot to play around with, and maybe bridge some gaps.
PS: Personally, I've had so much trouble with Siri lately that I'm going to wipe my phone. Maybe it's the microphone in my iPhone not working as well as it used to (I did check for lint covering the mics), or maybe it's the new on-board AI for Siri in iOS 10 (which seems odd since it still can't do something as simple as setting a timer or changing a song without an internet connection back to the Siri servers), but something is really wrong. Parsing has about a 2 chance of working, and when it does it probably won't be able to complete the request—like when I ask it to play an artist, song or album which I have in my Music app, which was bought from the iTunes Store, and which was parsed correctly in the displayed text, it says it doesn't exist. This doesn't mean that Siri is off, but it does mean something is, hence the need for a restore to help locate or resolve the fault.
Siri just needs serious work to catch up. It seems like DED does one of these pro-Siri anti Echo/Google Home articles every 6 months or so to keep people from abandoning the one true Apple religion for a product from another company. With Siri in its current state. It would be an embarrassment to release a home Hub anytime soon.
I would have preferred buying a great Apple product to do the same but I'm not holding my breath waiting for it to show up.
2) While Watch can be used most of the time in an independent fashion, it's also an accessory product. Why is Watch a failure because it's an accessory and AirPods aren't for being in the same category?
"Eidetic memory"? Did you look in a thesaurus to find an obscure word instead of just saying "photographic memory" or "perfect memory"? You picked a bad example in cooking since I've been cooking since I was 10. And yes, I can convert anything related to cooking in my head. It's not that difficult nor does it require you to be great at math. My mother and grandmother could also do it. It's not rocket science.
My morning routine goes like this: My iPad is on the kitchen table while I make/eat breakfast. All my Safari tabs have loaded the sites I visit to check news or other things I'm interested in. My daily appointments and reminders are also on my iPad so I can check ahead to see what I'm doing for the day. I also check my email (home and work). I usually respond to some emails and/or text coworkers about anything important. By the time I've finished breakfast I have accomplished every single task I need to on my iPad regarding my day.
All without ever having to ask some voice-assistant several different questions and carefully listen to its responses (it's a known fact that retention of detailed information is better when you read something instead of hearing it, as opposed to stories where retention is similar for both). Or dictate back that text message I planned to send with, oh maybe, a copy/paste of some information in an email. How do you do that with Alexa?
I just don't see how a voice assistant (Alexa, Google or Siri) is going to improve my morning routine, save me any time, or provide me better information that what I'm already getting. Nor how it will improve my daily routine at work where I DON'T have something like Alexa on my desk or in the numerous locations I'm required to be. Or when I get home. And no, I didn't look through those 10,000 skills. Why, to find one or two things that might be slightly more useful than what I'm doing now? Do you think every Alexa owner has read that entire list as well?
1) Alexa play _______ music
2) Alexa add _________ to the shopping list
3) Alexa set a timer for _____
I use Siri much more than Alexa, but I'm out and about, so Alexa is mostly useless to me.
I have heard some blogger say this every year since 2012
Maybe Siri works in the US. In Europe it is worse than an abomination. Like Apple it is monolingual. This is great if you only read English watch English live in an English country and listen or speak english. The minute that any of these change, Siri becomes pointless.
It cannot handle my non English names and addresses. I can't even train it to say Uli in English. I cannot use it in CarPlay because it cannot read German, understand German streets Blablabla. So I stopped using CarPlay altogether and went back to navigon. I cannot use it in AppleTV as it cannot understand any movies other than English and then only some, I can use only one function on my watch... set timer. Anything else is a joke. Using it on Music is diabolical. It understands madonna but not architecture and waves. Let alone any music that isn't in English. I cannot even contemplate using EarPods. Oh by the way, on my iMac it is useless. English only.
of course I could switch the language to German, which means switching all my device languages too. And then I would have the reverse issue. It doesn't understand English. And this is the thing in Europe, every country is multilingual! I know that is difficult to understand in the US, but that is the reality.
Everytime Tim Cook stands in front of an audience and brags about Siri being correct 94% of the time I want to scream for proof! It doesn't even work for 6% of the time for me.
So please spare me the 2017 is the year for Siri bullshit. It's a dog waiting to be put out of its misery. The really interesting thing is that since 2011 apple hasn't been able to make siri work, and they want to crack autonomous driving by 2019???? That is hilarious!
No one is saying that Apple should be the best at everything but they should aim for being the best in the arenas they choose to compete in. Apple's philosophy has always been about "Making the best products". The best products today = best hardware + best OS + best services + best developer ecosystem
but while waiting for shipping to begin, it occurred to me that I really had no use for it. (That's just me, I know.)
I immediately gave it away as a wedding present to a niece, and I've never regretted it.
She & spouse seem to mostly use it to astound and confound the older generation in the family,
by "mysteriously" playing music and "magically" adjusting the volume...(ooo-OOO-ooooo..)
so I guess it's a good thing the prices have dropped precipitously
("Hey, Alexa - what's Apple's 'next big thing'?")
I'm not apologizing for Apple here or elsewhere. I'm saying that you relentless complainers are joining and spreading an unjustified climate of hostility toward the company, just like the haters. You may be one of those, for all I know.
It's possible to kill the goose with this corrosive bilge. Jobs got rattled by it over the iPad hostility, and Schiller showed signs of it with his "my ass" comment. They know they have problems, and you know they're working on them. Why would you want to join this pack of miserable junkyard dogs like K2kw, insanely carping at them?